River-to-the-Sea Canoeing Painting

We are always attracted to art that depicts historical birch bark canoeing scenes, so were excited to acquire this original painting when it turned up recently in Maine.

It is a gouache on artist’s board signed by the artist Charles George Copeland (1858-1945) and dated 1891.

Given its double-scene layout and crisp black and white palette, this painting was most likely created to illustrate a book. In 1891 it was more common for an entire book plate to be created by the artist as it would appear on the page, rather than cutting and pasting multiple illustrations into a layout during the book production process.

The central portion of the painting shows two Native guides in birch bark canoes with their two “sports”–fishermen from away who hire local guides to transport them to prime fishing locations.

The guides are making their way upstream in a rapid river by pulling on a rope that is anchored on shore, either tied to a tree or held by another guide.

Each of the sports holds a very long fly fishing pole. These are modeled after the 16’ long bamboo fly rods that were popular in the mid-to-late 1800s for playing large salmon.

The following photographs from our personal collection date from the same 19th century time period as the painting, and document the veracity of the painting’s key elements: Native guides, birch bark canoes, and sports holding long fly rods.

These photographs were taken on the Matapedia River on the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec and the guides are Mi’kmaq. Note the massive size of the salmon held by the guide with the fish gaff above.

An 1880s photograph of a salmon fishing trip on the Matapedia River with His Grace the Duke of Beaufort, K.G. and Sir John Reid, led by Mi'kmaq guides.

The inset scene in the lower portion of the painting shows a birch bark canoe with Native men in the bow and stern, with three fancily-dressed white women as passengers. They are entering an ocean bay at the mouth of the river.

A second canoe being paddled by two Native men with four passengers is already out in the bay. One of the passengers, perhaps also a Native, has turned to wave at the people in the canoe behind them.

We are intrigued by the painting and the tale it tells, but before exploring our ideas about the location and story the painting could be depicting, we’ll provide a few details about the man who created it.

The Artist: Charles George Copeland

Charles Copeland was born into a sea captain’s family in Thomaston, Maine in 1858. While still young and living at home he began his art career by painting frescoed walls and ceilings in elegant captains’ homes in Thomaston.

In 1886 Copeland married Eda Mills, the daughter of prominent local sea captain Harvey Mills. By 1888 the couple had moved to Boston where Copeland began to establish himself as a professional artist.

Copeland became a well-respected painter as well as a book and magazine illustrator. He was a member of the Boston Art Club and the Boston Society of Water Color Painters.

Home of the Boston Art Club in 1882 (lostnewengland.com)

Prestigious locations where Copeland exhibited his paintings in juried art shows include the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Boston Art Club.

Here are some samples of his artwork showing his skill in accurately portraying dynamic scenes of people and animals, as well as his ability to create lyrical landscapes.

Until his death in 1945 at the age of 87, Copeland returned to Maine in the summers along with his wife and three daughters when they were young. The Copeland family's summer residence was Eda Copeland’s childhood home, a distinctive Italianate house on Main Street in Thomaston.

Charles built a studio on the grounds of the home where he painted watercolors of local scenes.

Fish weir painting by Charles Copeland (James D. Julia photo)

Historical records recount that Copeland was admired by the Thomaston community, being a “popular, very tall, well-built man with a closely trimmed beard.” (Morse, F.H.S. 1977. Thomaston Scrapbook. Hallowell, ME: Masters, Smith & Company.)

Tracing Copeland’s history in Maine led us to discover that the somewhat dilapidated house that we have always admired as we drive along Main Street in Thomaston is known as the Captain Harvey Mills house, built by Charles Copeland’s father-in-law and the home where his wife Ada Mills Copeland grew up.

This photo of the house is from a real estate listing in 2017 when it sold for $175,000, thankfully to people who are digging in to a long process of restoration.

Each time we’ve driven by the house since 2017 we’ve been heartened to see it being gradually restored to its former beauty.

Now that discovering a Copeland painting has led us to learn about the home’s original residents, we are all the more grateful that this piece of architectural, community and art history is being preserved.

Back to the Painting: Sleuthing a Narrative

Since we just acquired this painting we have not yet tracked down the book within which it appeared. But there are enough clues in the painting itself for us to surmise the theme and setting of the book.

Given that there are scenes both of Native guides with fishermen on a swift river, and Native guides paddling tourists from a river out into an ocean bay lined with cliffs, we believe that the story was very likely set on the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Quebec, specifically on the Cascapédia River and the Bay of Chaleur, where that river empties into the sea.

The red marker on the map is set at Gesgapegiag, a present-day First Nations Mi’kmaq reserve that was established in 1853 at the mouth of the Cascapédia River, a small reserve within the vast homeland that Mi’kmaq had occupied for centuries before European contact.

Another clue pointing to the location of the painted scene is the steep cliff with seabirds flying nearby. Although tiny in the painting, those birds have the distinctive field characteristics of Northern Gannets.

There are only six breeding colonies of Northern Gannets in North America, and all are on sea cliffs in Maritime Canada.

One of the Gannet breeding colonies is on the cliffs of Bonaventure Island, which is just off the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula surrounded by tricky tidal waters that nevertheless would have been a relatively easy paddle with canoeists possessing the generationally-honed skills of the Gaspesia Mi’kmaq.

The Gaspesia Mi’kmaq were also known as “the Indians of the Sea” because of their skill at crossing open ocean waters in long birch bark canoes, both to travel and to fish. They were also expert freshwater fishermen, and traditionally poled their birch bark canoes up the strong currents of the Cascapédia River to catch salmon.

Native guides poling birch bark canoes upstream with fishermen and provisions, circa 1880.

The Cascapédia is still a renowned salmon fishing destination, with average catches of 20-pound salmon and a record 54-pound salmon caught in 1886. It was during that era of the final decades of the 1800s that the Cascapédia became a popular fishing destination for English and American aristocrats who hired Mi’kmaq men as their guides.

A contemporary photo of mist over the Cascapédia, a well-known feature of the river that Copeland captured with white paint wash over the trees near the horizon of his painting.

Grand sporting lodges as well as luxurious private compounds (similar to Adirondack Great Camps) were built along the Cascapédia as it became an increasingly popular destination for wealthy rusticators and sportsmen.

A 19th-century painting by Albert Bierstadt titled "Salmon Fishing on the Cascapedia River" featuring Mi'kmaq guides in a birch bark canoe with a solo fisherman

Mi’kmaq canoeists took advantage of the stream of affluent visitors to their homeland to enhance their subsistence living not only by guiding fishermen, but also by guiding tourists, including fishermen’s wives and families, on outings such as along the coast to view scenic ocean cliffs and Gannett nesting colonies.

So we imagine that the book this painting illustrated recounted a story of a trip by rusticators to the Gaspé Peninsula where the men went salmon fishing and families took a day-trip tour out into the Atlantic's Bay of Chaleur, all made possible by competent Mi’kmaq guides.

We hope to find the book itself one day to see if our hunches are correct, and to follow its unfolding plot and character development. We can only wonder whether the story centered on the Mi’kmaq characters or on the white sports, and what sorts of adventures and relationships ensued.

Meanwhile, we’ll be satisfied to let our imaginations, fueled by actual historical accounts, fill in the details.

History Preserved

This painting captures a bit of late 19th century cultural history, particularly that concerning Native People’s livelihoods and traditional watercraft, as well as of the sporting and leisure pursuits of wealthy rusticators.

It also conveys a sense of the awesome power and beauty of nature in a dramatic landscape where a raging river meets the sea.

That all of this can be conveyed through a 14” x 16” painting speaks to the power of art to inspire our appreciation of distant times and places.